Canadians drop shoot-out on the road against Grads

By: Daniel Vazzoler

The Carleton Place Canadians wrapped up a three-game road trip on Sunday with a visit to the Navan Grads, losing the game 5-4 in a shoot-out.

Carleton Place sent a barrage of shots in the direction of Alex Wisco in the Navan net, but couldn’t translate the heavy advantage in shots and time in the attacking zone into a lead at any point in the game.

Seva Losev opened the scoring 12:34 into the game. Curtis Fabbro sent a shot on goal from a bad angle that got deflected right to Losev, who promptly one-timed the puck past Vincent Bujold-Roux for the Grads’ first lead of the game.

Less than four minutes later, David Poirier tied the game with a wrist shot that beat Wisco on the goalie’s glove side. The Grads forward responsible for covering Poirier sped towards the Canadians zone, thinking his team had the puck, and left Poirier open to step into the slot for the scoring opportunity. David Gagnon saw that and hit Poirier with the cross-ice pass leading to the goal.

The second period was one to forget for Carleton Place, as three goals from the Grads in the first nine minutes nearly put the game out of reach.

Goals from Wil Murray and Ben Badalamenti 1:16 apart gave Navan a 3-1 lead early into the middle period. Reece Bolton got one of the goals back 4:26 into the period, but a Francois Drouin goal from the top of the circle and along the boards restored the two-goal lead and marked the end of Bujold-Roux’s game.

Connor Murphy came in to replace Bujold-Roux, who allowed four goals on 15 shots, and in the 36:10 Murphy played, he stopped all 13 shots he faced.

The Canadians left the come-back to late, but Bolton’s second goal of the game with 8:51 remaining gave hope of tying the game. Cameron Patton scored on a penalty shot in the final two minutes of the game to tie the score and send the game to over-time, then eventually the shoot-out.

Jackson Arcan scored the only goal of the shoot-out as Wisco stopped all three of the Canadians shooters to get Navan the victory.

The Canadians return to the Carleton Place Arena this week-end for a pair of games. First, the Kanata Lasers face the Canadians on Friday before Carleton Place plays host to the Smiths Falls Bears on Sunday.